On October 5, 2017, the Network for Innovation in Career Guidance and Counselling in Europe (NICE) held an Opening Ceremony from 18:30-20:30, where the NICE Foundation was formally established. During the ceremony, the present founders developed project ideas for the next three years, and elected the first Elections & Ethics Committee, as well as the first Board of Directors.

24 individual founders and representatives of university and organisational founders participated in the ceremony. Including guests, about 40 people participated in the ceremony. Whereas all participants engaged in discussion on possible priorities of the NICE Foundation in the coming years, only registered founders participated in the elections.

Dr Rebeca García Murias (University of Applied Labour Studies in Mannheim) and Prof Monika Petermandl (Danube University Krems) were elected to form the Elections & Ethics Committee. In this role, they will organise elections and votes at Assemblies of Founders until 2020. Also, they will be the principal contact for ethical questions in the foundation and mediate intra-foundational conflicts, should they emerge.

Six colleagues were elected to form the foundation’s Board of Directors (Board) until 2020: Dr Anne Chant (Canterbury Christ Church University), Prof Lea Ferrari (University of Padova), Johannes Katsarov (University of Zurich), Prof Monika Kil (Danube University Krems), Peter Tielenius Kruythoff (University of Maastricht), and Prof Czeslaw Noworol (Jagiellonian University Krakow). Johannes Katsarov will perform the role of the foundation’s Coordinator.

NICE Foundation Board of Directors and Elections & Ethics Committee members elected on October 5, 2017 at the University of Padova in Italy (Photo: Peter C. Weber, CC-BY-NC 4.0 www.nice-network.eu).

Eleven proposals were made for the priorities of the NICE Foundation until 2020. For example, one proposal was to exchange students in Europe in projects of research-based learning. Another proposal was to organise training workshops for career practitioners at NICE conferences and offer training credit for the participation at NICE conferences, including for academics. Participants also suggested to begin with the development of a quality label for degree programmes, which has already been envisioned in the Statutes of the foundation.

The most urgent task for the elected Board will be to determine the date of the NICE Conference in Krakow that is foreseen for 2018. It will be the first of the annual networking conferences, which NICE is planning to establish, and shall place a strong focus on workshops and collaborative activities for the professional development of career advisors, career professionals and career specialists. At the 2018 Conference, NICE will also establish working groups to begin working on future projects. The Board will be charged with setting priorities in the preparation of the conference and engaging interested founders in relevant activities.

The electorate of present founders represented more than half of the 42 registered founders of the first generation. All in all, the registered founders of the first generation come from 18 European countries and represent 32 different organisations. The foundation continues to welcome new founders (higher education institutions, organisations and individuals) who are active in the academic training of career practitioners, or support academic training in the field of career guidance and counselling.

Further information is available on www.nice-network.eu or from Johannes Katsarov (johannes_katsarov[at]hotmail[dot]de)

]]>http://nice-network.eu/kick-off/feed/0CEDEFOP Call for National Experts in Lifelong Guidance and Careers Educationhttp://nice-network.eu/cedefop-call/
http://nice-network.eu/cedefop-call/#respondFri, 07 Apr 2017 15:34:13 +0000http://nice-network.eu/?p=1209Continue reading CEDEFOP Call for National Experts in Lifelong Guidance and Careers Education→]]>Call for National Experts in Lifelong Guidance and Careers Education

Cedefop, April 4, 2017

Cedefop is looking for national experts based across Europe to cooperate for the development of national lifelong guidance and careers education systems.

An expert is needed in each of the 27 EU Member States, as well as in Norway, Iceland, Switzerland, Serbia, Montenegro, Albania, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and Turkey.

Applications and supporting documents (CV and other documents demonstrating the suitability) should be sent by 28 April 2017 to: guidance-call@cedefop.europa.eu

Once registered, the system will automatically generate an alert email whenever Cedefop publishes a call for tender, anewsletter and new publications or events.

About Cedefop

The European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training (Cedefop), an agency of the European Union based in Thessaloniki, Greece, supports European policy-making in the field of vocational education and training. www.cedefop.europa.eu

]]>http://nice-network.eu/cedefop-call/feed/0NICE Newsletter #1/2017http://nice-network.eu/nice-newsletter-12017/
http://nice-network.eu/nice-newsletter-12017/#respondFri, 31 Mar 2017 17:14:08 +0000http://nice-network.eu/?p=1206Continue reading NICE Newsletter #1/2017→]]>The next edition of the NICE Newsletter has just been published. This issue includes: News from across Europe, the announcement of the International Conference in Padua from October 5-7, 2017, the participants’ report and evaluation of the ECADOC Summer School in Lausanne 2016, an article on the quality assurance and enhancement concept of the ECADOC summer schools, and the announcement of the ECADOC Summer School in Mannheim from September 4-9, 2017. We invite you to download this newsletter from http://journals.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/index.php/nice
]]>http://nice-network.eu/nice-newsletter-12017/feed/0NICE Conference in Krakow Postponed to 2018http://nice-network.eu/krakow-postponed-to-2018/
http://nice-network.eu/krakow-postponed-to-2018/#respondFri, 20 Jan 2017 12:16:22 +0000http://nice-network.eu/?p=1177The NICE Conference planned for September 2017 in Krakow has been postponed to 2018. Instead, NICE will co-organise a large International Conference in Padova, Italy, from October 5-7, 2017. Further information will follow soon.
]]>http://nice-network.eu/krakow-postponed-to-2018/feed/0Publication of NICE Handbook Volume II: European Competence Standardshttp://nice-network.eu/publication-of-nice-handbook-volume-ii-european-competence-standards/
http://nice-network.eu/publication-of-nice-handbook-volume-ii-european-competence-standards/#respondTue, 08 Nov 2016 08:38:05 +0000http://www.nice-network.eu/?p=997Continue reading Publication of NICE Handbook Volume II: European Competence Standards→]]>The second volume of the NICE Handbook ‘European Competence Standards for the Academic Training of Career Practitioners’ has just been published by Barbara Budrich International. The handbook features the European Competence Standards, which the Network for Innovation in Career Guidance and Counselling in Europe (NICE) has developed from 2012 to 2015, as well as recommendations for quality assurance and peer learning in the development of degree programmes for career practitioners.

]]>http://nice-network.eu/publication-of-nice-handbook-volume-ii-european-competence-standards/feed/0Online Publication of the French and German translations of the Handbook for Academic Training of Career Guidance and Counselling Professionalshttp://nice-network.eu/online-publication-of-the-french-and-german-translations-of-the-handbook-for-academic-training-of-career-guidance-and-counselling-professionals/
http://nice-network.eu/online-publication-of-the-french-and-german-translations-of-the-handbook-for-academic-training-of-career-guidance-and-counselling-professionals/#respondTue, 15 Mar 2016 07:49:30 +0000http://www.nice-network.eu/?p=891Continue reading Online Publication of the French and German translations of the Handbook for Academic Training of Career Guidance and Counselling Professionals→]]>Online Publication of the French and German translations of the Handbook for Academic Training of Career Guidance and Counselling Professionals

For the first time NICE publishes on the network website the French and German translations of the Handbook for Academic Training of Career Guidance and Counselling Professionals.

Both handbooks can be found and downloaded as PDF documents in the “Publications” section.

We hope, that you will like these resources and we would be happy to get your feedback in the comments.

]]>http://nice-network.eu/online-publication-of-the-french-and-german-translations-of-the-handbook-for-academic-training-of-career-guidance-and-counselling-professionals/feed/0Invitation to the international conference of the “Guide My W@y!” projecthttp://nice-network.eu/invitation-to-the-international-conference-of-the-guide-my-wy-project/
http://nice-network.eu/invitation-to-the-international-conference-of-the-guide-my-wy-project/#respondMon, 07 Mar 2016 10:10:15 +0000http://www.nice-network.eu/?p=875Continue reading Invitation to the international conference of the “Guide My W@y!” project→]]>Invitation to the international conference of the “Guide My W@y!” project

Dear Friends,

we present an invitation to the international conference dedicated to the topic of the support of youth mobility.

The host and organiser of the conference is one of the NICE members – the University of Applied Labour Studies (HdBA) Mannheim/Germany.

For further information you can take a look at or download the PDF document above that also includes the data of the contact person, Ms Elena Yuga, at the HdBA.

as you probably noticed in the last weeks we still had many difficulties with our new website. It was many times down, not accessible or the appearance of the site looked very strange.

I apologise for the inconvenience caused by all the technical problems, but it was really tough to migrate from the test domain on that the new site was created to our official domain – www.nice-network.eu.

Without a help from a friend and IT specialist Simas Juodelis from Lithuania I probably haven’t managed it.

Now I am happy to announce that the main technical problems have been fixed and I will be able to migrate step by step all the content from our old website and from other sources as well as to add some new functions.

Don’t forget to visit this new virtual home of NICE regularly and you will find from day to day more useful information.

we are happy to announce that today the new NICE website has been successfully launched.

Our site address (domain) remains the same: www.nice-network.eu as in the past. We would be happy if you could advertise the NICE Website through the homepages of your degree programmes and share the link in other suitable ways.

We have now a new and more user-friendly design. It is customized for different devices – PCs, tablets and smartphones. The development of the site is now also in our hands – that means that we are no longer dependent on external service providers and can react more quickly and make necessary changes.

For your work with the new NICE Website, we wish you a good start!

If you notice any problem or find an information that is no longer up to date, please contact us! For this purpose please use the comment function or our contact form.

With warmest regards,

on behalf of the Network Dissemination Team and the Network Coordinators

The document published above includes not only text of the NICE Memorandum, but also relevant statements and evaluations of the key stakeholder representatives on it.

At the European Summit on Developing the Career Workforce of the Future (Canterbury Summit, September 3-4, 2014), the NICE Memorandum was first presented to approximately 200 delegates from 32 European countries by NICE Steering Committee members Jean-Pierre Dauwalder, Laura Nota and Rie Thomsen.

Following the presentation, five representatives of key stakeholder groups presented evaluations of the NICE Memorandum:

Karen Schober, Vice President of the International Association for Educational and Vocational Guidance (IAEVG)

Dr Pedro Moreno da Fonseca, Expert at the European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training (CEDEFOP),

Dr Nathalie Prudhomme, manager and career counsellor at Compétences & Métiers, a French career counselling enterprise,

Dr Lukasz Sienkiewicz, a human capital expert, who supported the development of a common European competence profile for employment counsellors of public employment services (PES), and